Honor Thy Lover
by Illyriarocks
Summary: Various events have forced Nyssa to return to Starling on a more permanent basis, and joins Oliver and his friends on principle of honoring Sara even as her half-sister Talia formally declares war on Team Arrow. During her "initiation", Nyssa learns that power lies in more than just weapons and old codes of honor. Part 2 of the Bulletproof verse.
1. Prologue

For someone accustomed to the honor-bound and conservative ways of the League of Assassins, the hustle and bustle of the very liberal Starling City was undoubtedly baffling and alien to one Nyssa al Ghul. Daughter of Ra's al Ghul. Heir to the Demon. Logically, she would desire to find herself as far from it as possible and visit there only infrequently. Never, if allowed. The glistening, hidden city of Nanda Parbat high in the Tibetan mountains was her home. Where she was born and raised. Trained in the arts of her people. And yet she found herself in Starling again. All too often, her colleagues would suggest. But this city was important to Nyssa. It was her the love of her life was born, was raised, and ultimately died far too soon. She felt honor-bound to be here, even if she had declared war on Sara's friends.

She hesitated.

Emotion overtook her.

The vertigo-dealing man in the alleyway would live another day.

A familiar voice called out behind her:

"Drop the bow, Nyssa," Oliver called.

"You think I am here to kill you, Mr. Queen? I am not even poised to loose this arrow."

The Arrow's intense stare bore into the back of her skull. Nyssa was keenly aware that an arrow was trained on her, but made no move to lower her own weapon.

"Why else?"

"Have you ever stopped to think that perhaps I am here solely because I mean you no harm?"

"Given your last few visits, call me skeptical. Put the weapon down."

"I have no desire to hurt you or your friends, Oliver. I wish to join you."

"Excuse me?"

"I want to join your… Team Arrow."


	2. Nyssa In The Cave

"Unimpressive," Nyssa scoffed as she descended the stairs into Team Arrow's base of operations.

"It's enough," Oliver scolded.

"Were I in charge, it would indeed be in much nicer conditions that your compatriots find themselves."

"Oh, like you could do better than-" Felicity started. "Nyssa! Oliver, what the hell is she doing here?"

"Vagueness and double-speak, apparently," Oliver quipped.

This earned him the lovely sensation of his face meeting the floor as Nyssa literally kicked his ass and he flew forward.

"My father has disowned me. I've always found Starling to be a nice place to visit, mainly due to Sara, but that is of course changed now. I understand that her sister Laurel is aware of Oliver's identity and I sensed a kindred spirit in her when last I was here."

"Wait, so you're switching Lances, or," Felicity practically word-vomited before catching herself. The death glare alone she got from the raven-haired warrior was enough to make anyone want to cut their tongue out, not to mention the agony plainly seen in Nyssa's eyes. Ollie wasn't too pleased by the outburst either, if his scowl was any indication.

_**FWHEW!**_

An arrow whizzed past Nyssa's head and she whirled around to find Roy poised to kill her.

"Stand down, Roy," Oliver commanded.

Roy remained steadfast, almost daring Nyssa to make a move.

And make a move she did. Within seconds, Roy was on the ground, a knife pressed into his carotid artery.

"Next time, Mr. Harper, intend to use it," Nyssa growled.

With that, the former Heir to the Demon stalked away.

At that moment, the sound of Laurel's heels on stairs echoed throughout the base.

"What'd I miss," she asked.


	3. Talia

Nyssa had been in Starling for three weeks now. As expected, after her methods proved too "reckless" for Oliver's tastes, her initial request to be a part of his vigilante team had been denied. When Roy Harper confessed his suspicions of having murdered her beloved under the influence of Mirakuru, Nyssa had beaten him brutally. Almost to the point of death. Though the Heir of the Demon knew in her heart of hearts that the Magician had a hand in Sara's death, she needed an outlet for her grief and rage. Harper was still in the hospital. When Carrie Cutter began her mad crusade to win the Arrow's heart, she bested the former law enforcement officer in combat, only for Oliver to intervene at the last possible moment and send her off to ARGUS. He did, however, not seem to mind when she executed Digger Harkness. That her and the team's methods clashed was something Nyssa had expected, but never once did she expect to be barred from membership into Oliver's glorified archery club.

He did, however, have the basic human decency to put her up in a well-to-do apartment. While the League had the funds for her to be able to pass as a member of the one-percenters, one of the city's elites like Oliver, Nyssa preferred to live a less public and quieter life of modest means.

Her single-room apartment was bare except for the essentials of a bed, which was truly more of a cot, and the sort-of-kitchen area near the entrance. Okay, so it was a loft. A good loft, but still a loft. So, she might've been living alone. So what? She was used to it. She liked living alone. But as of this moment she wasn't alone. Using the acutely tuned senses afforded her by years of training, she pulled the intruder from the shadows and pinned them against the support beam closest to them.

To say that Nyssa face was a picture of shock was an understatement. The intruder was not Malcolm Merlyn, as she had come to expect in the months since settling in the city. It wasn't Oliver, come for the thousandth time to try and "bury the hatchet" as he said. What a strange phrase. Burying a weapon did nothing to appease interpersonal strains. It wasn't even Laurel, hoping to spar and become a better fighter. The woman standing before her had their father's eyes. Blonde, statuesque, build like one of the strong pillars of Nanda Parbat. Nyssa released her grip, but put her sword to the smirking woman's throat.

"Talia?"

"The one and only, sister."

"How is this possible? You were a child-"

"A child in the 1960s, I know. I should be in my seventies now. I have had this conversation more times than I care to admit, baby sister. Do you truly believe there is one Lazarus Pit in this world? No, there are seven. Or, at least there were. Now there are five, one of which is in the possession of Damien Darhk."

"So you consort with Darhk and his degenerates now?"

"I utilize their services when necessary."

"Does Father know you live? I seem to recall him exiling you around the time Malcolm Merlyn came to us."

"Father was always paranoid about me."

The past tense was not something Nyssa had ever heard in relation to her long-living parent. What did this mean, 'was'? Her father was Ra's al Ghul, and the fifth holder of that title, none had ever survived his sword.

"'Was'"?

"I killed him," Talia chuckled.

Nyssa gasped softly, causing Talia to only laugh more openly. As the brunette lowered her sword, Talia caressed her sibling's face.

"He is dead, sister. We have nothing to fear from him anymore."

"Our father, dead?" It still hadn't sunk in.

"I am now Ra's al Ghul, Nyssa. I am the Demon's Head. Malcolm Merlyn will die for the crime of orchestrating the murder of one of his own, as will the city that harbored him."

"Talia, you cannot be serious. Oliver Queen and his compatriots have given Merlyn asylum. If anything, your quarrel is with them and not with the city at large."

Talia's eyes shone with a madness Nyssa had not previously encountered, something deeper than the savagery brought on by the Lazarus Pit. Or Pits, now, as the case may be.

"My darling sister, your time with these Westerners has made you soft. Starling City will burn within the week. Its streets will run red with blood and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it."


	4. Gasoline

_Fire was an element with which Talia closely associated. Fire was cleansing, fire was pure. It was beautiful to behold. As she stood above a pit of fire, hardly a girl of thirteen, Talia felt no fear. The heat was almost unbearable, but this is what she had chosen as her rite of passage, as a way of proving to her father that she was worthy to be called his heir. She knew no other life than the League of Assassins, an organization dedicated to affecting change on a worldwide scale, and one day she would rule that mighty fist of nature with even more ruthless than her idol: the second man to bear the title of Ra's al Ghul, a battle-hardened man from the great nation of Japan. __**He had killed the first Ra's during a trial by combat. Survived the sword after murdering one of the League's finest in 1522. Been given the ring, had largely been unchallenged. That was, until Talia, daughter of the first Ra's and the woman for whom she was named, stood up to him. She had fled, so the legends say, after being defeated. The Great Desert Flower of Egypt, her olive skin kissed by the sun, had tried to spare a large settlement from the League's wrath. This new Ra's burned the place to the ground and put the entire population to the sword as a demonstration of his power. Talia, supposedly, died in childbirth some years later and her child was smothered to death.**_

Talia continued staring out the window of her apartment in the Glades, the tale replaying itself in her head over and over like a silent film from the 1920s. The will of humanity was malleable enough given the correct incentives. Oliver Queen and his people were already divisive among both the common people and law enforcement. Talia would provoke them into killing each other, or at least give them the proper extra incentive. Their ire would be the gasoline used to set the fire that would cleanse the ground upon which this corrupt city stood. Like Gotham before it, Starling would fall or she would die in the quest.

"What the hell do you mean you have a sister?" Oliver was incredulous. "Why wait until now to share this with us?"

"Until yesterday, Mr. Queen, I believed her to be long since dead! The information was irrelevant. Now I find that not only is she alive, but also that she has killed our father and taken over the League."

"All right, so how do we stop her," Laurel piped up. "I imagine she doesn't have as much restraint as your father."

"Considerably less. Talia is ruthless and extraordinarily persistent; she will use and everything at her disposal to achieve her endgame."

"And what is her endgame?" Diggle inquired.

"Talia was raised to be wholly loyal to the League's vision of balance and purity as set forth by the first Ra's al Ghul six centuries ago: humanity is fundamentally corrupt, and the most corrupt of us must face righteous judgment."

"So she wants to destroy Star City?" Oliver again.

"As a start."

"Oh, look," Felicity deadpanned, "we're finding out that some well-connected psychopath wants to destroy the city. Must be November."

"She also desires to murder the entirety of the city's population. Brutally and in the most drawn-out manner possible. Men. Women. Children. It does not matter to my sister. She's always been a fundamentalist, but this is a new level of insanity. I came back to Starling in order to honor my deceased lover. I may not like it, but it was her home and I shall not see it annihilated. You need me. All of you will need me."

Oliver stared into Nyssa's eyes, trying to detect some sort of lie or half-truth. Was this some sort of elaborate fiction to let her on the team? She was dangerous. She was an assassin.

"I was not too different from you when you returned, Oliver," Nyssa answered his unspoken argument against her.

"She has a point," Diggle inserted.

"Fine. But only until Talia is dealt with."

"Very well."

"Welcome to the team."


	5. Grave

Since arriving in Starling, Nyssa often found herself at Sara's grave. This was particularly true in times of crisis. Having your supposedly-dead sister not only be alive but also be a homicidal maniac was definitely a crisis of multiple varieties. While it was accurate to say that she was never very fond of religion, only having been exposed to its more misogynistic and xenophobic sides, Nyssa surprised herself by praying that night, though not to a god of any sort. Nyssa prayed hard and long, in a combination of Arabic and English, to a loved one. More specifically, to Sara for guidance and temperance. As she ended the prayer, the brunette assassin rested her head against the gravestone.

"Please, habibti…"

"Oh, lord, you're not gonna beg for my help, are ya?"

Nyssa whipped around, jumping to her feet at the sound of a trespasser's voice and raising her sword to the individual's throat. What insolence was this? How dare someone interrupt her sacred time with her beloved? But what she saw next made her drop her sword: Sara Lance, in the flesh, alive and well. Or so it seemed. But she didn't care. All she cared about was seeing her again. Who cared if she was just some manifestation of her grief?

"Sara."

"Hey, you. So I hear you got some problems."

Nyssa was understandably confused. Sara certainly looked real.

"Your big sister's back, right, and she's got some evil plan to kill people. Why don't you just stab her in the face and be done with it?" Sara continued. "You and Talia never got along, even for the brief time your lives overlapped."

This Sara was cold, calculating. Not the Sara she remembered.

"The woman claiming to be Talia does not even remotely resemble my sister. There is a possibility she could be lying."

"You sensed it was her, did you not? Those who have held the title of Ra's have never been a stranger to extending their lives by body-switching their consciousness whenever the Lazarus Pit's effects finally run their course," Sara countered.

That settled it; this was not Sara. Sara was in the ground below her feet and this was her mind telling her what she already knew. But, praise be, she would be damned if she didn't relish the moment she had with this figment.

"You have to do whatever is necessary."

"You think I'm unaware of such an eventuality?"

"But are you prepared to killing your sister, to drive your sword through her heart? Because if you aren't, and you don't, you'll end up dead like me. Save your friends, Nyssa, consequences be damned."

Nyssa turned back to Sara's grave at this assertion. Yes, the apparition was correct. Yes, she wanted nothing more than to see her new friends- even if that was a loose term- safe and out of harm's way when Talia's plan unfurled. Nyssa turned back but Sara was gone.

Alone and out of options, Nyssa pressed her lips to the marble in a chaste kiss and departed for home.


End file.
